8 posts from January 2009

January 31, 2009

In this video (likely from the early 80s), Bryan Magee talks to John Searle about the ideas and legacy of Ludwig Wittgenstein, who I'd say is among the top three western philosophers of the 20th century to have influenced me most (besides Foucault, who could be seen as "applied Heidegger," and Berlin). This relatively accessible conversation covers Wittgenstein's early work, the Tractatus, as well as his posthumously published, Philosophical Investigations. The talk is spread over five clips of about 7-10 minutes each: clip1, clip2, clip3, clip4, clip5. Enjoy.

January 29, 2009

Here is an interesting debate between two Muslim women in the US: Irshad Manji and Dalia Mogahed. Manji, a vocal critic of Islam, sees herself as a reform Muslim; it is easy to understand why young Muslims in the West, as well as those fearful of Islam, would be drawn to her. Mogahed identifies herself as a mainstream Muslim who is "passionate about moderation."

I found Mogahed's analysis of the Muslim world more illuminating, including her response to whether Islam is a religion of peace, and how radicalization is so often rooted in politics but then takes on the language of religion. I did squirm a bit when she referred to Prophet Muhammad's wars of conquest as models of just wars. She also showed remarkably little enthusiasm for ijtihad—even when led by qualified Muslim clerics—rooting instead for classical religious scholarship and its more liberal interpretations of Islamic faith and jurisprudence.

January 28, 2009

As many readers of this blog know, I went to the Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur (IIT, KGP) in West Bengal. Years later I visited my alma mater again and wrote about it here. Guess what I found today? Those familiar with Matt Harding's heartwarming dance videos from around the world (Where the Hell is Matt?) will likely relate to what it has inspired the students of IIT KGP to do. (via Pran)

The soundtrack is the same as in Matt's video — a Bengali poem written by Tagore (Praan, or "Stream of Life") and turned into song by composer Garry Schyman and Bangladeshi-American Palbasha Siddique.

January 19, 2009

This weekend I gave in to the hype and saw the movie Slumdog Millionaire. I entered the movie theater prepared only with the lowest of expectations. And so I was only mildly disappointed. The film has obvious and broad appeal as the quintessential underdog story, and while the cinematography succeeded in capturing something true about the texture of urban India, and the child actors were fabulous, the movie on the whole was just downright silly. (I might warn of plot spoilers ahead, but the movie is so devoid of surprises that there's no need.)

There has been a certain amount of criticism from Indian audiences clamoring (predictably) that the film Slumdog Millionaire fails in the way of all popular Western media, depicting only India's filth and poverty. But I don't see this as it's failing. After all, filth and poverty are undeniably part of the reality of India, and there's nothing wrong with situating a story there, as Mira Nair creditably did in her breakout film Salaam Bombay! In fact, the lives of the destitute, as any who live in extreme conditions or on the frayed edges of bare survival, provide fertile fields for real drama and deep inquisitions into the human condition, and there's no reason why they shouldn't be reaped as such, in much the same way as we regularly do stories situated in Europe during WWII and the Holocaust or the Antebellum South.

But even with the richest ingredients to select from, the storyteller can choose to whip up something fine and substantial, or to make cotton candy: sweet, light, and fun in the moment, but empty and ultimately unsatisfying (plus, eating it hastens tooth rot). And that's what Danny Boyle has done with this well-intended, hackneyed, feel-good flick. Now I've been known to enjoy my cotton candy as well as anyone—even to crave it on occasion—but what baffles me are the critical accolades this film is receiving from every corner. After winning four Golden Globes and literally dozens of of film festival and other international film awards and nominations, it's now considered by some to be the front runner for the Oscars.

Slumdog has its moments, to be sure. Like almost any Bollywood flick, this one too lurches between moments of pathos and bathos, flashes of insight and ingenuity engulfed the next instant by kitsch. But equally like most Bollywood flicks, the problems with Slumdog come down to dishonest storytelling: Veering away from human complexity and difficult truths to replace them with kitsch or stereotype; resorting to gratuitous displays of unwarranted emotion, violence, chase scenes, plot twists, and whatnot to tease, pull, or otherwise manipulate a response from the audience. Characters are uni-dimensional, with true blue heroes who are incorrigibly good, and bad guys who are horrifically bad. Moral "dilemmas" are conveniently black and white, so heroes and villains never need suffer a crisis of conscience—except, of course, when that villain is the hero's darker brother, in which case he is allowed a final change of heart, just before he dies, preferably in a hail of bullets. "Heroines" are absolute non-entities with a single character and role, which is to remain dolled up and precious, and finally to serve as the hero's grand prize at the end.

With two hours to hold onto us, Slumdog Millionaire managed to pack in every one of these devices. And on top of that, it suffered from bad acting, notably on the part of lead actor Dev Patel. Poor Patel was plainly not up to this role. I was even willing to accept that these uneducated slumdwellers spoke passable English, if only for the purpose of making an English-language film. But Patel's British accent and body language never for a moment allowed me to believe that he was acquainted with the life of the slums. He didn't even try. But, it gets worse....

January 11, 2009

Tarra, the elephant, and Bella, the dog, live together at The Elephant Sanctuary in Tennessee, where retired elephants from zoos and circuses across America may be fortunate enough to spend the last decades of their life in a natural habitat among friends. The Elephant Sanctuary is funded entirely by private donations. Read about the sanctuary and their elephants' stories and behaviors here.

January 09, 2009

Three audio stories from the New China that first aired in the US on the National Public Radio in June, 2008, and did so again recently.

Journalism With Chinese Characteristics"There is real investigative reporting in China, it’s just not done under a free press flag. Instead, practitioners mind an unstated set of rules, keeping themselves safe by employing tactics like using excessive jargon and exploiting government rivalries. It's an evolving dance requiring ingenuity, subtlety, courage and a willingness to be fired every day. Plus, a conversation with the former host of ‘At Night You’re Not Lonely,’ a call-in radio show that dispenses hard-won wisdom to the factory girls of Shenzhen, a city in flux."

China Vision"How the world sees China, and how China thinks it is seen by the world may make all the difference as time marches on. The West cannot afford to hold on to kung fu, Confucius, and chopsticks as our big ideas about China. Modern art, fashion, and the young urban elite have a new story to tell; if anyone’s listening. Plus, Brooke talks with the author of “Wolf Totem,” a best-selling novel and Chinese conversation piece about resisting and revering Mongolian wolves during the Cultural Revolution."

Brand China"With the Olympics just weeks away, China is making the final preparations for the PR push of the century, pitching brand China to the world. Meanwhile, young urban Chinese are sorting out new identities and advertisers everywhere are revving their engines, preparing to sell to the fastest growing consumer market in the world."

January 05, 2009

Returning home from China in 1292 CE, Marco Polo arrives on the Coromandel Coast of India in a typical merchant ship with over sixty cabins and up to 300 crewmen. He enters the kingdom of the Tamil Pandyas near modern day Tanjore, where, according to custom, ‘the king and his barons and everyone else all sit on the earth.’ He asks the king why they ‘do not seat themselves more honorably.’ The king replies, ‘To sit on the earth is honorable enough, because we were made from the earth and to the earth we must return.’ Marco Polo documented this episode in his famous book, The Travels, along with a rich social portrait of India that still resonates with us today:

The climate, he finds, is so hot that all men and women wear nothing but a loincloth, including the king—except his is studded with rubies, sapphires, emeralds and other gems. Merchants and traders abound, the king takes pride in not holding himself above the law of the land, and people travel the highways safely with their valuables in the cool of the night. Marco Polo calls this ‘the richest and most splendid province in the world,’ one that, together with Ceylon, produces ‘most of the pearls and gems that are to be found in the world.’

The sole local grain produced here is rice. People use only their right hand for eating, saving the left for sundry ‘unclean’ tasks. Most do not consume any alcohol, and drink fluids ‘out of flasks, each from his own; for no one would drink out of another’s flask.’ Nor do they set the flask to their lips, preferring to ‘hold it above and pour the fluid into their mouths.’ They are addicted to chewing a leaf called tambur, sometimes mixing it with ‘camphor and other spices and lime’ and go about spitting freely, using it also to express serious offense by targeting the spittle at another’s face, which can sometimes provoke violent clan fights.

They ‘pay more attention to augury than any other people in the world and are skilled in distinguishing good omens from bad.’ They rely on the counsel of astrologers and have enchanters called Brahmans, who are ‘expert in incantations against all sorts of beasts and birds.’ For instance, they protect the oyster divers ‘against predatory fish by means of incantations’ and for this service they receive one in twenty pearls. The people ‘worship the ox,’ do not eat beef (except for a group with low social status), and daub their houses with cow-dung. In battle they use lance and shield and, according to Marco, are ‘not men of any valor.’ They say that ‘a man who goes to sea must be a man in despair.’ Marco draws attention to the fact that they ‘do not regard any form of sexual indulgence as a sin.’

Their temple monasteries have both male and female deities, prone to being cross with each other. And since estranged deities spell nothing but trouble in the human realm, bevies of spinsters gather there several times each month with ‘tasty dishes of meat and other food’ and ‘sing and dance and afford the merriest sport in the world,’ leaping and tumbling and raising their legs to their necks and pirouetting to delight the deities. After the ‘spirit of the idols has eaten the substance of the food,’ they ‘eat together with great mirth and jollity.’ Pleasantly disposed by the evening entertainment, the gods and goddesses descend from the temple walls at night and ‘consort’ with each other—or so the priest announces the next morning—bringing great joy and relief to all. ‘The flesh of these maidens,’ adds Messer Marco, ‘is so hard that no one could grasp or pinch them in any place. ... their breasts do not hang down, but remain upstanding and erect.’ For a penny, however, ‘they will allow a man to pinch [their bodies] as hard as he can.’

January 02, 2009

On her delightful blog recently, Peony, holding forth on the topic of human rights and defending the "Asian Values" side of the debate (also see 1, 2, 3, 4), posed a bold question that both irked and challenged me: under what authority is "the right to gather or the right of free speech ... more fundamental ... than say the right for clean water and nutritious food"? This is an attempt to answer her question.

***

A great many of us today are "value pluralists",
i.e., we believe that humans live by many legitimate ethical values and
choices: adopting a baby or making one, joining the Resistance or
caring for a sick mother, socialist democracy or capitalist oligarchy.
We may not endorse all values equally, but we hold them legitimate in
the sense of being recognizable human values—in other
circumstances, we can imagine ourselves, or our friends, embracing
those values.

Value pluralism entails that often there are no
objective grounds for showing one value superior to another, and
further, that some of the values may be incompatible with each other
and might make tragic conflict unavoidable. For example, a wife's
strong desire for a child and her husband's strong opposition to it, or
theocratic and secular ideals in public life, etc. In any case, I think
it is quite safe to say that value pluralism is an empirical truth and
a universal characteristic of the human condition.

If value pluralism is
true, then "ethical monism"—the view that all ethical questions have one
correct answer that is part of a single coherent moral system (such as
utilitarianism, or a moral code derived from God / über-Reason)—is
false, and it can be critiqued and resisted not out of subjective dislikes, but on empirical grounds. Note that monism is an
asymptotic state, i.e., no one is a pure ethical monist but many are
lured by the asymptote. Call them monist fundamentalists; pluralists
ought to regard them the way evolutionists regard creationists.

But what separates pluralism from "relativism",
i.e., the view that the legitimate ethical values of pluralism,
especially in different cultural contexts, can never be judged from an
objective, and/or universal standpoint—let alone a liberal standpoint
which "gives special weight to toleration, personal autonomy and human
rights"? Relativism treats western liberalism
as just one among many kinds of local cultural values with no universal
validity. It argues that others may well prefer a different cocktail of values, say,
political stability, economic well-being, and traditional familial order. Who is to
say which is better? Note that relativism too is an asymptotic state,
i.e., no one is a pure relativist (everyone subscribes to some
universal values) but many are lured by the asymptote. Call them
relativist fundamentalists. The question now is: can they be right? Does pluralism imply relativism? And if the answer is no, does pluralism otherwise conflict with the universal claims of western liberalism?

Isaiah Berlin (1909-97), a British philosopher, historian of ideas, and one of the "most important representatives of liberal political thought," articulated in
considerable detail the idea of value pluralism and two concepts
of liberty: negative and positive. Though he explicitly claimed that he was not a
relativist, his reasoning for it was either too general or too ambiguous.
Later philosophers have embraced his core ideas and extended his work
in two notably different directions.

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New Book by Namit Arora

“The Lottery of Birth reveals Namit Arora to be one of our finest critics. In a raucous public sphere marked by blame and recrimination, these essays announce a bracing sensibility, as compassionate as it is curious, intelligent and nuanced.” —Pankaj Mishra